John Glenn

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT JOHN GLENN - PAGE 2

Thirty-six years ago John Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth, setting America on its historic course to land on the moon and win the space race with the Soviet Union. He became such a popular American hero that President John F. Kennedy ordered NASA not to send Glenn into space again for fear of losing him. At 77, Glenn is about to become the oldest person to go into space. He is a crew member on Thursday's scheduled launch of the Discovery shuttle, a mission he hopes will again break new ground by showing that space travel may have no age barrier.

To Red Sox loyalists, Ted Williams is still their idol. But when he was asked recently about John Glenn, his 80-year-old voice boomed as it always has. "John Glenn," he said, referring to the 77-year-old retiring senator from Ohio, who will be launched Thursday in the space shuttle Discovery, "is my idol in life right now." Their relationship goes back to when they were Marine pilots during the Korean War. "It's just too bad," Williams, a staunch Republican, once told him, "that you're a Democrat."

Many of you thought that the idea by a man named David McGrath -- an idea I wrote about here last week -- was a terrible one. The idea was that big-league athletes would do themselves, and the country, a favor by serving in the military while America is at war. Pro athletes get knocked so much -- for their salaries, for their reluctance to sign autographs unless paid, for appearing to dog it on the field of play -- that they could use the goodwill...

On Feb. 20, 1437, Scotland's King James I was murdered in Perth. In 1839 Congress prohibited dueling in D.C. In 1938 Anthony Eden resigned as British foreign secretary, charging Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with appeasing Nazi Germany. In 1962 astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, circling three times before landing in the Atlantic.

It might be true that you can't go home again, but Thursday, John Glenn will prove you at least can go back into space. To borrow the current film "One Tough Cop's catchy tag line, there are still real heroes. Thirty-six years after he became the first American to orbit Earth, Glenn, 77, will become the oldest person to travel in space as one of seven crew members aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Glenn will take part in experiments on aging and weightlessness. Ask plainspeaking former Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, 73, about the mission and he'll tell you it's "a chance to bring back some new science in a field we have not investigated.

Thursday marks the fifth annual Space Day, an international educational initiative to advance science, math and technology; the initiative also gives students hands-on opportunities to learn about living and working in space. The national celebration blasts off at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington with former astronaut John Glenn. Questions for Glenn, current NASA astronauts, scientists and others can be posed during the live Cyber Space Day Webcast, available at www.spaceday.

Yahoo purchase: Yahoo Inc. is buying Broadcast.com Inc. for $5.7 billion in stock, adding the Internet's leading supplier of radio and video programs to its services. Yahoo currently offers a directory service and search engine for the World Wide Web, providing links to millions of sites. Broadcast.com is perhaps best known for its Web broadcasts of John Glenn's second launch into space and the Victoria's Secret fashion show. But the company's services are expected to grow in popularity as connections to cyberspace get faster and easier.

On Feb. 20, 1792, President George Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office. In 1895 abolitionist Frederick Douglass died in Washington. In 1962 astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling the globe three times before landing. In 1980 the U.S. announced it would boycott the Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. In 1985 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told a joint session of Congress that Western military strength brought the Soviets to the bargaining table in Geneva.